Hi John,

All comments welcome of course. Blog posts, results, and calendars are all put on the web site first. This is mainly done by me, so as you can imagine, takes a good chunk of time to manage.
Facebook, and to a slightly lesser degree, Twitter, are a brilliant vehicle for instant sharing from many sources (not just me and a blogger or two such as El, and Matt - who are great at posting).
It's not a conscious decision, more a response to society's general take up of social networking. Everybody is connected, all of the time. What I am doing, is looking at better integration of various feeds onto the site (which without a lot of coding, relies on plugins to our Wordpress based site).
This would mean that we have a better Facebook feed, and this would be more prominent on the site. I'm working on this now, along with a revised gallery plugin (as this is still not working since the software developer changed the way that the plugin works), and a re-jigging of the main page to show blog, Facebook, Twitter, calendar et al.
You'll also notice that the forum hardly gets used at all. It all works, but most prefer Facebook. It has a richer content, is easier to use, and is more visible to the members of the club.

So to allay your fears - the site is bang up to date (latest Guardian Cup results posted only yesterday), and it's going to remain as the main promoted site for the club.

With any luck and a prevailing wind, I'll get some hours to throw at it to put in place some of the ideas that I've been trying offline.

John

Good to see you post doesn't start with your latest disaster

You are correct, much of the forum traffic has moved to FB. This has been a conscious move and the committee support both methods going forward. My personal view is that FB is just more user friendly and intuitive. That said, if there is something I feel is important, I will post on both.

But in summary, it would appear FB is only going to become more popular.

I always to stimulate a debate!

Not much of a debate starter. Must try harder.
Jim's also correct in terms of the intuitive nature of Facebook. Forums are great, but are a bit behind the curve in respect of their richness of content and general 'look and feel'. The only advantage that a forum has is in keeping topics separate. So they are a good place to have an ongoing, topic specific conversation, that won't get lost in the general 'most up to date' arena of Facebook.
Facebook wins hands down in getting info out there, quickly, to a very wide audience.

I've also had feedback with reference to the forum in respect of it's lack of use, but mainly from those who only check on the forum once every now and then, and don't use Facebook at all. This means that they're not getting the most up to date information anyway, as they're not checking regularly!

As Jim also stated, where we've got forum or web posts, we'll cross post, so as to get good information and reports across all channels.

Personally I think Facebook is a pain in the proverbial as it's full of dross so I rarely go on it as it's just a time waster. I'd rather we had no link with it at all and just had the website as I'm slowly losing interest in putting entries on the forum a I can see that the numbers of people reading them are dropping, probably because they are busy on Facebook. Maybe it's the quality and length my story telling that is the problem there though! 😆

If instant messaging is progress then the improvements are lost on me. I think John summed it up nicely and we are in danger of losing the focal point that the we-site gives us. Sorry to be controversial but it's my job. 👿

🙂
This is also true. It's unmoderated. Saying that, it's also down to the user to limit the feed of information. I regularly 'purge' people from Facebook that I have friended or subscribe to if they keep posting 1) pictures of their pets, or 2) pictures of their dinner/tea/coffee or 3) post a status map each time they visit the Trafford Centre/Costa Coffee (you all know who you are so stop it).
Do keep posting though. People do read (looking at the stats), but don't often post. Also, as Jim was saying above, we can always cross-link to any text written here.

As society is getting lazier, and modern social delivery methods are becoming more pervasive, fewer will search for information (it's surprising or possibly not, how many people ask me what time we meet when it's on our web page, easy to find).
It's all about delivery and 'push' notifications! Used properly, it is very effective. Abused, it's the worst mindless feed of garbage that one can imagine.
Now it is an interesting thread. Thanks John. 🙂

Can we just transfer this post to Facebook please 😉

I agree, there is a lot of drivel on FB, but I think you will see a big difference between personal FB posts and those placed on the WVCC FB site. The later does tend to have relevant post and information, much the same as you will find on the forum. It is probably also better at advertising the club and attracting new members

Indeed you are correct sir. Hence the intimation that it is the responsibility of the user to limit his feed of information. 🙂
WVCC Facebook feed is fine, and relevant.

It is completely right that the club has a Facebook feed but I really do think that it is a backwards step to make Facebook the first destination for visitors; it should be supplemental, mostly fed from the website, not the other way around. Which successful corporate body has Facebook as it's prime Internet presence? It is always the other way around. Looking at this from the point of view of a potential new member, if you Google 'cycling club Northwich', the Weaver Valley website is at the top not Facebook. As I say, moving over to Facebook means potentially the club will get lost within Facebook. An up to date website will, for the foreseeable future, be the most important thing.

I agree with all of your sentiments John.
I do feel that those members who are not on facebook have been let down and quite a few have no idea why the WVCC website has become almost redundant. It would have been helpful if there was a post or an article explaining why. It almost feels as though the facebook crowd are restricting their news and conversation to fellow facebookers to the exclusion of those who are not signed up (the word clique comes to mind). Some may say that it's discriminating against the more mature members who may be less inclined to join facebook.
It llooks like I (and many others) will have to forego the pleasure gained from reading and placing posts on the WVCC website because there's no way I'll be signing up to facebook. I do know how facebook works and I don't like it one little bit.

To be fair though guys, it works both ways, while you may enjoy reading the posts, many members don't actually contribute, it is always the same people that put up posts.

As the saying goes, use it or lose it! It's up to you.

An interesting and thought provoking discussion.

Here's my overall summary:

John. You are correct, and we haven't said that we are ditching the web site, nor the forum, and I will be integrating feeds onto the site as I get chance to put some work into it. The web site will remain as the main focus of WVCC's online presence.

Jed. You aren't alone in not liking Facebook. The web site however is not redundant, and all the calendar information, news, results and blog posts sit on there. Links to other areas of media are there, and when a new post is put up, a link on the Facebook page will also point back to the web site. In actual fact the web page has not seen drops in activity. Tuesday and Wednesday's race and time trial results were online within 24 hours. This weekend, as soon as Al posts the calendar for July, this will also be posted. Blogs however will be posted as people write them. Unfortunately, I can't write all blogs (as I'm not at every WVCC event). Dave and Jim also post excellent TT reports for open time trials on the forum.
Facebook use as a social network which is easy to use is favourable to most, and less technical than the forum, hence many people will use it. Again, with better integration onto the main site, is feed will appear on the main web site (as it does now but with a little more clarity and detail).

Jim is absolutely right though, there are only a handful of contributors to the web site and forum. Most just read and never post. This is a choice, and not something that we can press gang members into doing. Keep watching though. None of the online stuff is disappearing, and we'll continue to use as many online tools and outlets as our members require, and no members will be excluded from any content that is relevant to the club, with important announcements cross-posted across all online media outlets.

Hi Ady
A very thorough answer.
I do take your point in that contributions tend to come from a minority and the majority just read. Everybody makes their own choice. It is perhaps telling that at the time of writing, this thread had been viewed 75 times but there are only a half a dozen people writing. What do the silent majority think?